Wolverhampton council spends £32 million on agency staff
Cash-strapped Wolverhampton council has spent more than £32 million on temporary and agency staff in the past five years, despite facing crippling £146m budget cuts and laying off 1,200 staff.
The figures were revealed under Freedom of Information laws, and demonstrated the bank-busting cost of agency and temporary hires.
They showed that in 2012/13, the council spent £7,798,791 on agency and temporary staff, but that number was slightly down the following year to £7,700,806.
The fee sky-rocketed to £10,359,840 in 2014/15.
Last year, up until November, £6,926,467 was spent, bringing the total up to £32,785,904.
Dia Chakravarty, political director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "The council could examine if cutting down the number of agency staff would be better value for taxpayers' money.
"At times like this when taxpayers are feeling the pinch, councils across the country need to do their best to keep costs down. Cutting out every little bit of waste would mean more more resources for essential frontline services such as healthcare and road maintenance."
Finance boss Councillor Andrew Johnson defended the spend, and pointed to the council's Yoo Recruit as a way the authority is looking to reduce the cost of temporary and agency workers.
He said: "When added up over a number of years, the figure might look high, but when its broken down there are a lot of gaps to fill.
"We have care workers who have to be covered, so we get agency staff in.
"We have a large mixture or people from agencies who are employed, sometimes it might be a case of needing someone who is a specialist who we only need to employ for a short period of time. We now have our own agency, Yoo Recruit, which is where we get the majority of people from.
"This is important because it cuts out the cost of paying agency fees.
"We are always looking for ways to try and bring the figure down, but with any large authority such as a council, agency staff will be needed to fill essential gaps.
"We don't just go out and hire people on a whim, we know it can be costly to do."
At a meeting last July, Councillor Johnson said the authority was taking 'significant steps' to reduce the figure.
Councillor Wendy Thompson said at the time that she was concerned about the agency bill figures and that the council should 'think very carefully' in the future about the accumulative cost of employing agency staff.
